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Member Diary – August 21st, 2015 by Noah Hansen

Today was one of those days you will never find in junior corps. While all summer high school and college students are on tour, the luxury of having one sole job as a member is shockingly apparent. Members live together, eat together, and shower together every day for 3 months. However, when you are a member of an all-ages drum corps, this philosophy is only a saucepan of gravy on the backburner. Instead of the usual 8 AM bright and early report time for hornline members, we began lining football fields at 11. This change gave some flexibility for those with jobs, and ensured that if the members with full-time jobs couldn’t make it to rehearsal during our four hour block, they would be able to catch up fairly quickly, unlike a day that we rehearsed for seven plus hours.

After painting fields at lovely St. Thomas Academy (the hosts for all the corps participating in the show, and the show itself), we began our rehearsal block. It was a fairly low-key rehearsal with the key focus on getting better. These are personally my favorite rehearsals. After our run-through for the day (when I typically feel at my worst, and ibuprofen is second only to water on the “List of Things I Can’t Live Without Right Now”), we had an ample break to get any food, shower, and polish those lovely horns before our true home show. While we have a lot of shows in Minneapolis/St. Paul (DCI Minnesota Regional, Harding High School’s A Knight of Music and Motion), Sounds of Minnesota is our true home show. I gave it my all, and performed the heck of the show, and in my third year with this organization and fifth year total marching, this was the best performance of my life. I felt so proud of what I did and what the entire ensemble was able to produce and our ability to perform at the highest level. Our score reflected my feelings of accomplishment.

Post-performance we performed our show again, this time at a standstill. This is always wonderful because as a performer you are able to channel all of your energy into your playing without the physical fatigue of running around. But perhaps my favorite part of the whole night was when all alumni were invited down to the field to sing our corps song “For All We Know.” The powerful lyrics of the song always make me cherish the wonderful people who help make this amazing thing we call drum corps happen. Our Executive Corps Director Eric Molho always says something along the lines of this after our longest weekends: “I encourage you to find and thank someone who made this weekend wonderful for you.” “For All We Know” captures this philosophy perfectly for me and helps escape stress and channel my passion for performance, love for the friends I’ve made, and the excellence that Minnesota Brass has instilled in me as a person.FAWK.